Perilous
by CobraShipper
Summary: When the Master becomes obsessed with human execution methods, her fantasies merge with her desire for the Doctor into a dangerous game of pleasure and violence. Set in the Lesbiverse AU
1. Chapter 1

Notes

In the Lesbiverse, several male Doctor Who characters are female-bodied, including the Doctor, the Master, and Jack Harkness. They have not switched gender at any point. That's just how they are. For past examples in this universe, please read my other Doctor Who stories. Chapter 1

The Master collapsed theatrically into the chair at the head of the long conference table. She swung her legs up onto the conference table and tipped two Vicodin into her mouth, followed by a swig of cognac.

"I swear human sedatives couldn't calm an Arcadian tumblefly," she sighed, glancing at the dingy tent that served as the Doctor's bedroom aboard the Valiant.

"Bad day?" the Doctor sneered. The Master had left her for three days, alone save a few guards, a couple of Toclafane, and Martha's doe-eyed mother. She'd determined, in what was to her the equivalent of solitary confinement, that she'd return the favor with impudence and sarcasm.

"You would think, you would just _think _that humans might get it right. They don't call you 'Doctoress', do they? So why call me 'Mistress'? It's insulting," the Master said, still hardly looking at the Doctor.

"It's not the first time it's happened." The Doctor dragged herself closer to the Master, not daring to rise to her feet. She wanted to bring her hands within touching distance of her legs curved like a milk glass vase, even if she knew she couldn't touch until given permission.

"No, it isn't. The Toclafane are trained to take out anyone who says it. There have been a few... mistakes, of course. But people _keep doing it_." She swung her legs off the table, flashing the Doctor a bit of her black panties between the dagged edges of her skirt. "So you know what I did?"

"What?"

The Master stood, staring out over the room as if addressing her cabinet. "I made an example."

She smiled and dropped a hand roughly on the Doctor's head.

"Oh, these humans have remarkable ideas for doing away with one another. Nothing like the Time Lords just dissolving you into atoms in some secret chamber."

Yes, humans certainly had put a lot of thought into judicial "offing", thought the Doctor. Having almost been a victim of it enough times, the Doctor couldn't recommend it.

"So like any good scholar of the universe," the Master said, winding her hand deeper into the Doctor's hair, "I had to try it myself."

She yanked the Doctor's head back and leaned down to meet her eyes. "I found it good." She let go, but the Doctor felt the pain linger and fade, as if running down her hair from the roots. After a pause, the Master continued: "But it could have been far better."

The Master rolled her neck and rubbed a hand down her spine before she lowered herself again into the chair, this time with her legs splayed.

"Well, Doctor?" she said impatiently.

The Doctor placed her hands on the Master's knees and nudged the Master's skirt with her nose.

"Ah-ah," the Master said as if following a script.

The Doctor had forgotten, as she often did after the Master had left her a while. "May I?"

"May you what?"

"May I touch you with my hands?" the Doctor panted. She'd forgotten as well her vow of impudence. "May I touch you with my mouth? May I touch you with my tongue?"

"Yes, Doctor. You may. Now stop wasting time." The Master settled back into her chair, lifting her hips so that the Doctor could remove her panties. She felt the Doctor's mouth on her almost immediately, and she wriggled a bit, causing the Doctor to move with her. She jerked again, purposely, and the Doctor tried to follow. She used her hands to lift herself up in the chair, and the Doctor tilted her head up like a puppet on strings. The Master continued her subtle movements, leading the Doctor in a complicated dance. That man had danced, though not as long as the Master would have liked. When they'd cut him down, the disgusting sod had a stiff pecker. The Doctor's canvas shoes kicked out behind her as she scrambled to keep up with the Master, and the Master imagined them, for a moment, kicking at nothing but air. She froze. The Doctor's tongue curled around her, and she sighed, relaxed far more than any sedative could provide.

"Good girl," the Master cooed, pulling the Doctor off her by the hair.

The Doctor looked up at her, a satisfied smile beneath eyes rimmed red with fatigue. That was funny, the Master thought. For a week, the Doctor had been left pretty much alone. Good time to catch up on sleep, and yet…

She lowered the Doctor's lips to her thigh and let her suspicions fade into the warm kisses. The Doctor traveled up, unbuttoning her rumpled shirt, pushing aside the cups of her bra. Her breath spilled like blood over the Master's skin. A hundred wounds in front of a ten thousand people, and the Master imagined she had carved each one. She groaned and felt herself swelling again, aching for the Doctor's fingers in her this time. She took two of them roughly into her mouth, licking the rough knuckles before drawing them out again. The Doctor knew the rest. She opened her slowly, driving her fingers inside up to the wet knuckles.

The last wound, though, that would be the finale, the blade sliding between the cartilage of the Doctor's neck, the blood of a Time Lord on the Master's hands.

She finished with a throaty scream. _Fuck,_ she couldn't wait for the next Earthling to commit a capital offense.

They trudged into the room like the most dismal of parades. Five women, mud-smeared orange jumpsuits closed at the cuffs with manacles, stopped in front of the Doctor's blanket fort of a hovel. The Master brought up the rear, beaming wildly and spinning her laser screwdriver like a baton.

"Doctor, Doctor!" she shouted, rattling the chains that bound the women to one another. "Here, Doctor, Doctor!"

The Doctor had heard her coming and chose to ignore the cacophony. The sheet opened around her.

"Oops!" said the Master. She dragged the Doctor to a chair by the back of her shirt. "Now, Doctor, you come when I call," she growled.

The Doctor resisted, letting the Master struggle against her dead weight to get her into the chair. A sickening suspicion about the Master's plan rose in her throat.

"There," the Master said once the Doctor sat obstinately in the chair, "the guest of honor."

"I'm decidedly honored," the Doctor said wryly.

Five women in varying states of shock and terror stood before her. The second on the right looked hardly older than a schoolgirl and, the Doctor noticed, painfully like Rose Tyler.

"Well, Doctor," the Master said, "pick one."

"For what?"

"Can't you see the jumpsuits? What do you think?"

"Parole?"

The Master laughed, and one of the women covered a small sob. The Master lifted a section of the woman's dark hair and twisted it into a rope.

"What are you afraid of?" the Master asked her. She drew the rope of hair across the woman's throat like a coiling snake and looped it around her neck. "Oh… that's it, isn't it? You grew up in a world where murderers get to rot in prison. Not in my world, cheesecake."

"Stop it," the Doctor said. The woman wept now, biting her lip to no avail.

"She's a good choice, don't you think, Doctor?" the Master said.

"No."

"How about her?" The Master pinned the Rose woman's arms to her sides. "Hot enough for the flames, she is."

"No."

"Oh, Doctor. I'm not selling you a flat. They're all going to die, you know."

"If I don't choose?"

"You always ask that."

"If I don't choose?" the Doctor repeated through gritted teeth.

"Then we'll throw a bit of a gala, and the Toclafane will have four less victims. You have ten seconds."

The Doctor tried to focus on the women's worn fabric shoes. In the months the Master had ruled Earth, she had kept the Doctor cloistered far above most of the bloodshed, a fact the Doctor had not fully appreciated until this moment. The Doctor knew what destruction had been wrought upon the planet. The Master told her in murmurs and gasps and psychic transfers, and the Doctor preferred her seclusion. It helped her concentrate on Archangel… and on the Master. The Master was giving her an entire year, as she savaged every natural resource she could out of the planet. The longest they'd been together since the day they'd left Gallifrey, and the Doctor had relished it. Hundreds of years of need tethered her tightly to the Master's will. She drank memories of their lost planet from the other Time Lord's skin and felt absolved of her own guilt.

The Master hummed a sharp line of game show music, patting each woman roughly on the head as if playing a perverse game of "Duck Duck Goose".

"Five seconds… and… three… two… one. What'll it be?"

The Doctor lifted her gaze only as high as the women's chests. She closed her eyes and pointed. She heard a choked "Hrrrrrrngh" noise, and the Master laughed again.

"You saw her," the Master snapped at the guards. "Have the Toclafane dispose of the other four. Now Doctor, why don't you grow up a little and open your eyes?"

The Doctor forced her eyelids open in just enough time to see the Rose woman being led away with three others. She felt relieved and then immediately guilty. The remaining woman looked about 35 and fairly defiant. She looked at the Doctor with pity that the Doctor knew she didn't deserve.

"Poor choice, Doctor," said the Master. "The one on the other end committed high treason. You've got a thief."

"Prepare her," the Master said to the last two human guards. "Tomorrow, dawn, you know the drill."

The woman marched between them from the room, eyes forward and head tilted slightly up. When they were gone, the Master draped herself across the Doctor and smiled up at her.

The Doctor didn't smile back. "The drill?"

"Why yes. It's not everyone, you know. But the Toclafane just weren't _cutting it_."

The Doctor stood suddenly, and the Master dropped to the floor, landing on her toes.

"You're sick," the Doctor said. The Master stared up at her, attractive as ever in a fitted suit and short, slicked hair, and the Doctor wanted her with a peculiar intensity.

"Drop the nobility act." She laid her head on the Doctor's chest, breathing deeply between her breasts. "I know what's in that spiky little head of yours."

She reached beneath the Doctor's untucked shirt and pulled her close enough to rub against her hip bone.

"Against the wall," she rasped, and the Doctor hardly pushed back as the Master's hands compelled her to a set of round windows.

"First I'll strip you," the Master went on, unzipping the Doctor's trousers.

When the Doctor stood with her naked back to the window, the Master said, "That's when I'll tie you up."

She turned the Doctor to face the world below, buzzing with industry like the tiniest model train set. The Master bound the Doctor's wrists together up to her elbows, tight enough that her fingertips numbed almost immediately.

"Let's see you," the Master said, turning her again and grinning. "Yes, then I'd read the sentence again, for their benefit, you see."

Now the Doctor knew what the Master was doing, and she caught a shallow breath.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Earth," the Master said, presenting the Doctor with a flourish to the empty room. "The Doctor, convicted for hiding her true identity and stealing a TARDIS."

"The Time Lords already got me on that one," the Doctor murmured.

"They didn't finish the job, did they?" the Master said, digging her fingernails into the side of the Doctor's neck and dragging them down her chest. "As I was saying. Utterly guilty. Really horrible person, that Doctor. We'd be best off without her."

"Reprehensible," the Doctor added.

"She has been sentenced to death."

"Of course."

"Will you just let me speak?" The Master slapped her across the face. "She has been sentenced to…"

The Master dropped to one knee in front of the Doctor and spread the Doctor's legs apart. "Death," she said, plunging a finger into the Doctor, making the other Time Lord groan.

"Ooh, good reaction there, Doctor." She pushed in further. "By firing squad."

With her other hand, the Master pulled her own trousers down to her thighs and ground her body against the Doctor's, bending the Doctor over her shoulder as they both breathed heavy and long.

"And then the drums begin," the Master said, and the Doctor felt the thunder of drums in her chest, four beats with the emphasis on the last. "And they're lining up their shots." The Doctor tasted gritty sand in her mouth and thought she almost heard a voice shout "Ready!"

The Master pushed the Doctor upright again and lowered her lips to the Doctor's stomach. "The first shot hits you here."

She bit, and pain far greater than what the Doctor should have felt radiated from the spot.

"Then another here." The Master bit the top of her right breast, and the Doctor heard the distant report of a musket.

The Master bit her arm. "This one's not a very good shot."

"Ah," the Master said, nudging the Doctor's left breast up with her nose, "this one's spot on." She bit over the Doctor's left heart, and the Doctor fell back against the windows involuntarily. The sensation of pouring blood ran over her skin. The Doctor panted as her lungs seemed to lose capacity. Yet she knew she wasn't dying. She tried to grip the Master who was pulling away, but the sensation left with the Master's touch. The Doctor slumped to the floor.

"Where did you…," the Doctor panted. "Where did you learn that?"

"Did it work?" the Master asked.

"Yes. Yes, it worked," was all the Doctor could manage.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Warnings for this chapter: violence, non-consensual violence, death, emotional torture

The woman's name was Penelope Atkins. The Doctor learned it as the Master announced it before a gathered crowd and the entire broadcast network of Archangel. Actually she learned it about three hours later while sitting in front of a television in the Master's bedroom. The camera cut to a small girl with her face buried in a stone-faced old woman's lap, presumably the woman's daughter and mother.

It was over in a matter of minutes. The drums beat just as they had in the Doctor's mind the night before. The muskets were high-powered rifles. The audience cheered with no real conviction, and the Doctor deduced it had something to do with the armed guards around the perimeter. Penelope raised her head as they prepared, and the Doctor held onto her relief that Penelope was at least clothed.

"I don't know why they always do that," the Master said, stroking the Doctor's leg, "standing so composed and defiant like it matters. Oh, here it comes."

The Doctor gritted her teeth against her urge to be sick. Penelope fell to the ground just as the Doctor had, only faster and less alive. The Doctor had chosen this for her, a public spectacle and fuel for the Master's fantasies.

"I agree, Doctor," the Master said. "It's too fast."

She took the Doctor's lack of an answer as agreement. "I'll work on dragging it out a bit."

The Doctor awoke alone in the Master's bed. Ribbons of light filtered through the electric blinds that the Master had left open a few inches. The Doctor's eyes felt bulbous and scabby from the times she'd awakened from her nightmares and cried. Either the Master hadn't noticed or ignored the quaking of the Doctor's body beside her. She'd slept through the night with a satisfied smirk. The Doctor dressed in just a shirt and pulled the doorknob. Locked. She sighed and slipped into the shower.

The Doctor tilted her head back into the warm water, letting some of it run down her nose until she gagged. If she filled her lungs with water, let her respiratory bypass take over for a while to keep her from regenerating, she could feign death just long enough for the Master to notice. She could curl up on the shower floor and wait, breathing shallow and slow. What would the Master think? She'd probably be pleased, depraved as she was. She might lay the Doctor out on her bed and surround her with flowers or bury her alive and sit a vigil until the Doctor forced herself out of the shallow grave. Smeared with dirt, they'd make love against the Doctor's tombstone.

The shower curtain whipped aside. The Doctor lurched over the side of the tub as the Master pulled her by the arm.

"Get dressed," the Master said, wrapping her in a thick towel. "I've got a surprise."

The Doctor dressed slowly, considering all the possible surprises the Master could have planned. Judging by the number of teeth the Master showed when she grinned, it was sure to be unpleasant.

"If you insist on moving like one, I can easily turn you back into an old lady," the Master said, interrupting the Doctor's dressing with a kiss on the neck.

"I think you enjoy me too much as I am," the Doctor answered.

A slight nausea lingered from the night before, made worse by the Master's breath on her face. Desire and revulsion churned through her brain, and the light bouncing from the mirrors around them seemed disorienting as halogens in an interrogation room.

"Ready," the Doctor said, buttoning one button on her coat.

"Ah-ah, not yet. You need one more accessory." The Master reached into an inner pocket and paused. "Turn around. On your knees."

The Doctor turned. The sharp tone of the Master's voice erased some of the revulsion. She dropped to the ground and waited. The Master rustled through her jacket a moment, and then the Doctor felt something cold brush her neck. The Master brought the chain around the front and looped it behind her.

"Took a little trip to a pet shop," the Master said. "And this collar just screamed 'Doctor'. I would say I hope it makes you scream 'Master', but I doubt you'll be able to scream much of anything."

She jerked it once, and the links cut into the Doctor's throat – a choke chain, a training collar for particularly difficult dogs. The Doctor supposed that suited her.

Rose had loved her with tenderness and inexperience, refreshing humanity after the horror of the Time War. The Master, though, knew the Doctor's body and mind. She could exploit the Doctor's deepest secrets for she herself had helped plant many of them. She brought the Doctor displays of power like bouquets and petty cruelties like terms of endearment.

"Up," the Master said. She jerked the chain again, and the Doctor stood.

The room in which the Master kept Jack Harkness dripped with the humidity of boilers and misty rainclouds that had been dissipated by the Valiant's giant engines. Jack dangled, her long hair pulled back into a stringy ponytail, between two posts. She lifted her head as the Doctor and the Master approached.

"You're looking good Doctor, very clean," she said, ending in a cough.

The Doctor saw an uneven pink line not quite healed under her chin, extending up each side of her jaw. She had hardly seen Jack the past few months, and when she did, Jack would greet her altogether too cheerfully, a grim reminder that the Doctor lived in relative luxury aboard the Valiant. With all her bravado and her 51st century libido, Jack gleaned no enjoyment from her experience with the Master. She clearly kept her sanity for the Doctor's sake.

"Thank you, J – " The Master pulled the Doctor's chain tight again.

"I get to do the talking now, Doctor. Two weeks ago, I tried an experiment on our lovely little freak here. In my infinite curiosity, I wanted to know whether she could re-grow whole limbs. And behold, she did not disappoint. No. She grew a new arm, a new leg, a new _head_. Messy business, that. Got a pile of rotting Jack we need to drop off sometime."

The Doctor had suspected what the Master was doing to Jack. Excitement had crackled through the Master's voice when she first learned of Jack's peculiar talent. Death's Champion and the Woman Who Couldn't Die.

"But you see, Jack did something really terrible last night. She tried to escape again. Destroyed two Toclafane and injured one of my men," the Master said, handing the Doctor's chain absently to a guard and stepping up to Jack.

Jack visibly recoiled at the Master's touch. The Master stroked Jack's chin as she continued: "I had to punish her for it, of course, but then I learned that you had encouraged it, my dear Doctor. Why would you do a thing like that?"

The Doctor's hearts pounded. Yes, she'd told Jack to find a way to escape at every opportunity. And why not? Jack had no part in this. If she hadn't followed the Doctor to the end of the universe, she would be picnicking in the Himalayas with the rest of Torchwood.

"Please, Master. Leave Jack out of it. She's no threat to you," the Doctor muttered.

"Oh, dear. It's not enough for you to have that Jones girl running around down there for you. You need your immortal champion to help her."

"Just send Jack away. Leave her on another planet, in another time. Just... don't." The Doctor looked at Jack who shook her head vigorously. Both of them knew what was coming. The Doctor dropped to her knees on the grated floor, feeling the chain pull tight and then loosen. "If you have to kill someone else, make it me."

The Master switched her gaze between them for a moment as if considering. Jack glared at the Doctor. Then the Master ran a hand through her hair and laughed.

"That's no fun at all!" she shrilled. "You'd just stay dead. Wouldn't want that."

"Penelope stayed dead."

"And so have all the other people I've ever killed. Notice how none of them has been _you_."

"Logopolis."

"Accident. And it's not like you stayed dead either." She draped an arm over Jack's shoulder. "I rather like this human idea of drawing and quartering. Fascinating, really, except they always died before the end. The shock and blood loss of disembowelment is too much for a human body, apparently. What about you, my favorite starfish?"

"I'm human, remember?" Jack said in her low American accent.

"Just enough for me to smell it."

"Master, no," the Doctor said softly.

"You're right. Not here," the Master said. "We need an audience." She turned to a passing worker. "How soon do we land?"

"Five minutes, Master."

"Long enough for passing a sentence, huh, Doctor?"

"Master...," the Doctor said. If she were the one in Jack's position, she might have leaned back in the rope restraints to soothe her lust. She would have welcomed the lurid details of how she would lose her own head because none of it would happen. The night would end not in the Doctor's lifeless body but in both her and the Master panting on the floor. Not so for Jack. She would endure, as she always did, and then she would die for a while. Jack would return in agony only to experience it again by new hands.

"Jack Harkness, once called 'Captain'," the Master said, pacing between them with a parchment scroll, "'for the crime of repeated escape attempts, you are hereby sentenced to be drawn from the airship Valiant upon a hurdle' – that's a sort of sled-thing – 'to the place of execution.' That would be Madison Square Garden. Seemed appropriate."

She walked around behind the Doctor and continued reading: "'There, you shall be hanged by the neck.'" The Master grasped the Doctor's chain and pulled until she got to her feet. "'And being still alive, cut down.' We'll skip the bit about privy members. 'Your bowels taken out and burned before you.'" She hooked an arm around the Doctor's stomach and pulled her in toward her. "That's the part where they tend to die. 'Your head severed from your body.' That's the part where I want _you_ to die, Jack. 'And your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the Master's pleasure.' See, I replaced 'King' there. Rather clever of me. So, the question remains... which quarter will grow into the rest of you?"

"My favorite, obviously," Jack said.

"We'll see which that is."

The Master did none of the deed herself, preferring to prance the stage like a mad conductor. Most of the audience seemed to have been roused in the early morning; some still wore pajamas. A place of honor had been reserved for the Doctor to one side of the stage – a cushioned bench with shackles for her and room for the Master. She noticed a good number of people glowering at her and wondered what the Master's propaganda machine was churning into their homes.

Jack's black dress, streaked with dust from the streets, whipped around her as she walked up the steps. Children peered curiously from the audience, and the Toclafane shot a warning zap at a woman who covered her daughter's eyes. After reading Jack's sentence again, the Master took her seat beside the Doctor to watch Jack continue her ascent.

"Beautiful," the Master whispered. Indeed Jack radiated grace like a queen attending court. The Doctor wished she'd scream, willed her to jump into the audience and run, but she knew that would only prolong the moment. Perhaps the Master would do it twice then, in different cities.

The Master felt she had truly outdone herself on Jack's execution. Jack Harkness, always somewhat attractive for an Earth girl, looked positively gorgeous as she stood beneath the gallows. The Master carefully unbuttoned the center of the Doctor's shirt and crept a hand inside. If Jack became more attractive with a noose cinching around her neck, then the Doctor... the Doctor...

Jack obeyed the Master's command and lived. Naked and bloodied, she offered herself wordlessly for the coup de grâce. The Master had risen to taunt her several times throughout the ordeal and now rose again, leaving the Doctor disheveled in her seat.

The Master wiped the blood from Jack's gasping mouth. She wouldn't last much longer.

"Good girl," the Master said, brushing a hand along Jack's hairline.

"Do it now," she ordered.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Jack died for four days this time. The Master at least gave her the dignity of leaving all of her in one cell, or perhaps she was afraid of ending up with multiple Jacks. The Doctor never saw how it happened, but after four days, she glimpsed Jack tied again to her posts, back in her old, stained clothes.

That night, the Master laid the chain collar again about the Doctor's neck and related through touch Jack's experience. The Doctor suspected the Master had pulled Jack's memories right from her mind. As she felt her phantom spinal cord sever, guilt filled her rather than gratification. She shoved the Master away and rolled off the table.

"Too much for you, Doctor," the Master said with a grin.

"These are people's _lives_," the Doctor said. She huddled against a wall, hiding her nakedness with her arms and legs.

"Jack's got enough to go around." The Master crouched beside the Doctor, looking almost concerned. She lifted the Doctor's arm, kissed her left breast. The Doctor did not resist.

In the mental turbulence of experiencing and passing on Jack's memories, the Master had replaced Jack's face and body with the Doctor's, but they retained a cloudy surrealism. If one only dreamt about traveling to Castoreli Major, one had never truly been there to walk among the upside down trees in the sun caves.

"You need rest," said the Master with the most kindness she had mustered since regenerating into this body. "You can have my bed again."

The Master raised herself cautiously onto one elbow so she could watch the Doctor sleep. The Doctor breathed quiet and deep, trusting the Master not to hurt her. The Master snorted a laugh. She wasn't sure she trusted _herself_ as much as the Doctor did. So many times, she had almost killed the Doctor, and some of those times she had wanted to. Her hatred and her love tangled like raveling tapestry threads around the Doctor's life. She never knew when the wrong one would snap.

Artificial light crept in over the top of the sliding blindfold. Instead of the now familiar choke chain, she felt coarse rope against her skin and shuddered.

"Stand," the Master said. "Now, up here."

"You're not really going to..."

"No, Doctor. What if I got carried away? Now, up."

The Master slid her patent leather-clad foot under the Doctor's naked one and lifted it onto a short platform.

"Are you sure you're not – "

"Do you trust me?"

No, of course the Doctor didn't trust her, but that was part of the thrill. She stepped up with her other foot and felt the rope tightening.

"It used to be, in England," the Master said, "that a woman who had committed petty treason got a far worse punishment than a man." She lifted the Doctor's long dress slightly and ran a hand up the inside of her leg. "Instead of a simple hanging like a man got, a woman was burned too."

The Master licked up her leg like tiny tongues of flame. "Sometimes they let her die first, which I personally find to be no fun at all, but other times... oh other times it was all at once."

This time the Master sent no psychic stimulation. She knew the pain of burning alive. She would make this pure fantasy.

"And there she'd be, choking to death, the feeling going out of her legs as she saw them blister and crack beneath her blindfold. The noose would prevent smoke inhalation, so she can't breathe in to make the end come faster. No, it's all black and heat and a haze between you and the audience and your blood cutting off from your brain so slowly you could be slipping into a dream."

She lifted her head beneath the Doctor's dress and swept her warm tongue up between the Doctor's legs.

"And by the time the flames get here," she whispered, "a human would be dead. But not a Time Lord. No, not a Time Lord."

The Master stroked and lapped like fire, and the Doctor twisted, the rope getting tighter with every movement. Finally, as she started to lose her peripheral vision, the Master released her, and she collapsed to the ground.

"Good, wasn't it, Doctor?" the Master asked. "It would be rude not to thank me for it."

The Doctor could only cough a reply. Her blindfold barely covered one eye now. The Master loosened the rope slightly and took the slack in her hands. With the knot against the back of the Doctor's head, she lead the Doctor's mouth to her clit.

"Suck," the Master said, and the Doctor did as the noose slowly crushed her throat again until she gasped. The Master loosened it. "Continue."

"She looked like you, just a little, as much as a human can look like a Time Lord," the Master said, pulling long breaths as she spoke.

"Who?" The Doctor stopped.

"The girl from yesterday," the Master said. "Who told you to stop?"

The Doctor tried to rise. "What girl?"

"I thought you were paying attention. Am I really the only thing on your mind? Not up on current events? That resistance leader girl. Got her on treason. Mind you, I had to cut her hair and dress her in brown first."

"Did you put her in a pair of trainers too?"

"Did I call her 'dear Doctor' and make her fuck me first? No. Do you really think I would?"

The Doctor yanked the rope from the Master's hands and shoved her into the wall.

"You're sick, just sick!" the Doctor shouted. She grappled with the rope, trying to remove it.

"Yes, I am sick! Sick as I've always been!" the Master cried.

She sprang to her feet and dove for the Doctor, dragging her down by the rope still around her neck. The Doctor choked and flailed beneath her. The veins in her neck bulged as she bucked against the Master's weight. Finally, she lost consciousness.

Pop music blasted the Doctor awake. She covered her ears and curled up on the hard floor.

"Wakey, wakey, Doctor!" the Master shouted, banging on something that turned out to be the bars of a cell.

"_Don't you want to?_" the music blared. "_Don't you want to hold the gun?_"

The Doctor raised her head, rubbing her sore neck.

"Turn the music down!" shouted the Master, and it faded immediately.

"Look, Doctor, I've got one of those nifty little scrolls for you," the Master said, waving a familiar piece of paper between the bars. "Wonder what it says…"

"Don't," the Doctor answered. She stretched her neck back and leaned her pounding head against the metal wall. "I'm not in the mood for it right now."

"Hardly anyone ever is." The Master read from the scroll, "'The Doctor, an alien from another world and enemy of Earth, is hereby sentenced….' You should know I thought a lot about this. I'd considered the breaking wheel – oh, the agony of it! But you know, that's what the humans they used it on died of, the agony. Not you, though. So I thought… the drawing and quartering, that was fun. But we've already done that. You deserve something new."

"I deserve a proper rest."

"And that's exactly what you'll get, when I'm done with you."

"It's not funny anymore."

"Let me finish. 'For multiple traitorous actions and attempts on the person of the Lord and Master of Earth, resulting in punishment upon the entire human race.' They'll like that part. A lot of people would pay to see you dead. 'To hang by the neck – "

"Oh, yes, of course," the Doctor sighed.

"Do you understand, Doctor? This isn't a fantasy anymore. It was always my fear of seeing you die that stopped me every time we've met," the Master said, crouching and pressing her face between the bars. "And now I can think of nothing else. I want to do it myself this time, hold you still and sink a knife through your skin. I want to dress you in white so the blood blossoms into florid patterns."

She breathed through gritted teeth, terrifying as she'd been the moment the Toclafane had burst through the rip in time. This was how everyone but the Doctor saw her – an abomination from beyond the stars, clearly unhinged.

"What then?" asked the Doctor. "A cosmos without me?"

"My dear Doctor, we have had so long, so long to enjoy each other. You knew it had to end at some point. Better at my hands, don't you think?"

"I'll regenerate."

"And I'll keep going. You're almost out of lives. You give me your new body, and I'll wreck it."

The Master had to be playing a game with the Doctor, making her believe so that she could draw gratification from the Doctor's fear.

"When and where is this going to happen?"

"In three hours, in London. Always was your favorite."

The Doctor crawled closer to the bars. She reached for one of the Master's hands, hoping for a hint of her intentions, but the other Time Lord drew her hand out of the Doctor's reach. The Master stood, and the Doctor remained on the floor. Her headache had subsided though a growing trepidation replaced it. Her throat burned slightly when she breathed, a reminder of the Master's capacity for violence.

"You should make your peace, Doctor," the Master smirked. "Oh, and may God have mercy on your soul."

When the Valiant touched down on a deserted roadway near the Marble Arch, the Doctor stood naked in the center of a small room. The Master paced around her, letting out a little "hmmm" every few steps. If her arms had not been bound behind her, the Doctor would have wrapped them around her body to hide her shuddering. She reasoned the room must be cold, that she wished the Master would touch her only for the warmth of her fingers, of her jacket lining brushing against the Doctor's naked hip.

Silently, the Master picked up a length of coiled rope from the table. A white shift lay beneath it, gleaming under the harsh lights. The Master stepped up to the Doctor and stared into her eyes. She stroked the Doctor's chest with the back of one fingernail.

"Down," she said.

The Doctor's body quaked involuntarily at the command. She started to kneel.

"Oh, you too, Doctor? Going with quiet dignity?"

The Doctor rose back to her full height, and the Master kicked the back of the Doctor's knees, forcing her to the ground.

"That's more like it," the Master laughed. She dropped the noose around the Doctor's neck.

"Up." She yanked it, and the Doctor struggled to stand. The fibers were softer than they'd looked; the rope seemed almost gentle.

The Master turned her roughly to face a long mirror propped against one wall. The Doctor's freckled body glowed starkly white against the Master's suit, and the rope cut a thick line across the base of her neck.

"This is how I finally conquer you," the Master said. "Stay in this body until the end. I like it."

"No."

"You like it too." The Master plied her fingers between the Doctor's legs. "Just one more time, then?"

"Not if you're killing me."

"Doctor, you wound me."

"Good."

The Master drew her hand away, leaving a deep scratch up the Doctor's torso. She tugged the rope. "Come along, time for clothes. Wouldn't want you going out looking like that. People might get the wrong idea about us."

Drums pounded as they had for Penelope Atkins, but the Doctor came not in a cart but led like a dog by the Master. Her hearts kept time with the beat, and she was afraid. Until she stepped off the Valiant into the parted crowd, the Doctor believed the Master meant to intimidate her, to drag her to the brink and show she had full control over whether the Doctor lived or died. But in front of so many people, the Master would never relent. This would be the Doctor's final walk.

The Master had expected a half-baked escape attempt. She had planned for it, trained her loyal Toclafane on a pair of bright-eyed twin girls. The Doctor stepped hard and determined toward the platform, as if entirely ready to trade her life for a last moment of dignity.

The Master pulled her close and whispered in her ear, "I'll bleed you out slowly, and then I'll take your left heart just to show them you really are an alien."

"We're from the same planet," the Doctor said.

"They know what I am, but you, their savior… if you were the same as me, what would they think?"

"They think Lucifer was an angel."

The Master slapped her, not a light, corrective hit but an audible smack that would leave a mark long after the Doctor was gone. The Doctor regained her balance, burning from the blood pooling under her skin. She said nothing else as the Master taunted, as the audience cheered, as rough hands yanked her up the stairs she was doing fine ascending on her own. As she reached the top, she looked out at the buildings rising high around her and knew where she was. _Old Tyburn._ The Master's sense of humor at work again.

The Master tossed the slack of the rope to a man in dark clothes and gazed up at the Doctor. "One last kiss, then."

"No," the Doctor said, though she ached for the Master's kiss to soothe her for the coming pain.

"Your loss. Go on up, then."

The Doctor felt a tug and mounted the tiny stool.

The Master watched as one trainer-clad foot and then the other landed. They would be planted there only long enough for a few brief… announcements. She wished for that final kiss, but perhaps she would steal it later. The Doctor's crimes, numerous as they were, took several minutes to list, and the Master looked back every few lines to see the Doctor biting her lip in expectation.

The Master kicked the stool away herself, setting it upright again just out of the Doctor's reach. The Doctor's legs pumped, forever running but this time from nothing. The Master stepped up on the stool, twisting to avoid the Doctor's kick, and grasped her reddening face.

"Oh, my brilliant, bloody stupid Doctor. So noble," the Master said. She drew a knife and reached behind the Doctor, holding her tightly. She sank the knife into the Doctor's lower back. "So beautiful, even like this. What a fine mess you're in."

Time Lord blood poured warm and thick over the Master's hand. She pulled it back and brought the knife to the front. As she punctured the skin over the Doctor's left heart, she gripped the Doctor's fighting body and kissed her clenched lips. Particles like dust filled her lungs, and she let go of the Doctor in horror. The Doctor's face seemed to glow in the overcast midday. No.

"Kill the broadcast!" the Master shouted. She sawed through the rope with the bloody knife in blind desperation. "Kill them all." She waved her other hand quickly toward the stunned audience and chopped at the last strands. A gold mist traveled up the rope, wrapping around her hands. The last strand broke, and the Doctor dropped, lifeless, the last foot.

"At last footage of the Doctor's body…," the newscaster stated as Martha's mother entered with a tray of custard and berries.

She pointedly ignored the television as she left the tray on the bedside table and bowed out of the room.

The Master stroked the Doctor's hair while she slept. Food and a warm bed were the closest she could come to asking forgiveness.

"…Solar flare which interrupted yesterday's broadcast…," the newscaster continued.

The Master took a bite of one of the sandwiches and then held it under the Doctor's nose.

"Wakey, wakey," she whispered.

The Doctor opened her eyes and looked up at the Master sternly. "No, thank you," she said.

"Not bad," the Master said, taking another bite. "Bread's a bit dry. Jam's a bit runny. Typical Jones cooking, but from what I hear, it's better than Tyler cooking."

"You killed everyone there, didn't you?"

"Yes."

The Doctor nodded. "You didn't kill me."

"You started to –"

"I know."

They sat in silence for several minutes, watching the recap of the Doctor's supposed death. Apologies and forgiveness hung unspoken between them, as they often did. The Doctor groaned inwardly from the pain, as she often did. But for the first time since the Master had chosen that name, the Doctor felt hope.


End file.
